


Obedience

by SegaBarrett



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: Captivity, Gen, M/M, Puppy Play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-18
Updated: 2014-01-18
Packaged: 2018-01-09 04:13:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1141278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jesse and Todd have a routine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Obedience

**Author's Note:**

  * For [loves_music17](https://archiveofourown.org/users/loves_music17/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I don't own Breaking Bad, and I make no money from this.
> 
> Warnings: References to canonical character death (Granite State), on-screen canonical character death (Felina), lots stuff of a general non-consensual nature but not rape, beatings, violence, threat of violence.

Jesse opens his eyes against the darkness of the grate, the place that these days he calls home. He’s gotten used to the perpetual dirt, the smell that he can’t quite put a name to, and the confined feeling, being chained up. He doesn’t even try to move very far these days.

He has also gotten used to what comes next.

Today is not a cooking day. Even as he cannot mark the days, he somehow knows which days he will be cooking and which days he will not be, and all the signs point to another day up in the clubhouse with Todd.

He would much rather cook. Todd has stopped going down there, seemingly realizing he will never be up to Jesse’s level, and these days it is a kind of blessed freedom where at least he has his thoughts to himself.

The tarp comes off and Todd makes his way down the ladder. Jesse lets out a whimper, a hopeless one, as Todd unchains him and lugs him up the ladder, leads him to the clubhouse and attaches a leash to his collar, forces him down on all fours.

This is what they do the other days.

“Todd,” one of them, Kenny, calls out, “Make sure you keep your mutt off the furniture.”

“I know,” Todd replies with a big smile, “You tell me every time. He’s a good dog though.” Todd reaches down and brushes his hand over Jesse’s hair in an awkward sign of affection. “Good dog.”

Jesse lets out a whine; he’s not sure whether it’s pained or appreciative anymore; how could he even be appreciative? Glad to be called a “good dog” by the man who shot Andrea in front of him? But these days life is so black, so bleak, that even a backhanded compliment raises his spirits guiltily.

Todd leads him, crawling, over to a corner of the room where he’s placed a bowl, filled with what looks like Spaghetti-O’s or Chef Boyardee, both of which would actually be a step up from the pizza crusts and half-frozen leftovers they feed him normally.

Todd looks at him expectantly, gesturing to the bowl.

“Aren’t you hungry, boy?” he asks, putting his hand on Jesse’s neck and leaning him down into the bowl. Jesse whimpers, but figures this is about all he’s going to get today. He opens his mouth and eats slowly, trying not to gag. He doesn’t quite manage and had to bite back a growl as Todd goes, “Aww. Poor doggy.”

When he’s eaten about as much as he can manage, Todd pulls him up and starts to walk him through the clubhouse as the others jeer.  
One of them tosses a ball, a ratty old tennis ball, and Jesse looks at Todd with a plea in his eyes.

He gets no mercy, however.

“Fetch,” Todd instructs.

Jesse whimpers but obeys, leaning forward and taking the ball awkwardly between his teeth. 

If this keeps Brock safe…

God, he wishes he knew for sure that Brock is safe. Maybe he’s with Andrea’s grandmother. Hopefully so. The woman had hated Jesse, but no doubt loved Brock; who wouldn’t, after all?

As Todd takes the ball out of Jesse’s mouth and throws it, Jesse pictures Brock saved, Brock loved.

Maybe one day he will get out – 

But no, that thought process only leads to the image of Todd marching up to Brock and – 

No, Jesse can’t bear it. He runs after the ball and grips it again, despite how it makes his teeth and jaw ache. This is the life he’s meant to have from now on.

This is the only life he deserves.

***

Later in the day, Todd approaches him with a hose, and Jesse’s eyes go wide with panic. He even lets out a dog-like whimper, pleading, but it doesn’t do any good.

Todd turns it on and it hits Jesse full blast. He can feel his skin being yanked, pulled back, and he shuts his eyes hard to protect them.  
It seems like an eternity until it’s over, until the stream is off and Jesse is left, sopping wet, still on all fours. At some point he must have lowered his belly to the floor because he’s face down. He slowly pulls himself up with a great effort, like he’s doing some kind of a push-up. 

“Good dog,” Todd intones, going over and cuffing his neck with the palm of his hand. “I know you didn’t want a bath, but you needed it, you know?”  
Jesse gives a pathetic nod; at this point he can barely even disagree with them anymore. They are all he sees, so why wouldn’t they be right?

These days they seem all-knowing, and he must rely on them for everything.

He really does feel like a dog, given the things they say, the things they do. The leashes, a choke collar that makes Jesse wonder if he won’t just suffocate right there one of these days when it’s on too tight. The thought is actually near tempting – if he died he would be with Aunt Jenny and Jane and Andrea and he would never have to cook again.

 _All dogs go to Heaven_ , he thinks wryly. 

Todd replaces the choke collar with a dry one and attaches the leash, pulling it taut.

Jesse’s hands shake under him and he collapses on his face with a grunt. Todd makes a sympathetic noise before yanking the leash. As he’s being pulled forward, Jesse briefly feels bad for any pets Todd ever had in his youth. 

Jesse hadn’t ever had a pet growing up; his parents had found them too unpredictable, too messy, and Jesse considers they probably thought him too irresponsible to take care of them. Jenny on the other hand had adopted a big golden retriever when he was a kid, a big fluffy thing that had knocked Jesse over in its enthusiasm. When Jesse had been older, and when he’d lived with her, she’d had a big white cockatoo that had passed away shortly after she did, even though Jesse had taken reverent care of it. 

Jesse figures that Todd was probably one of the kids who had lit stray cats on fire.

“Come on, Jesse,” Todd says with impatience, pulling him back towards the grate. “The guys are having a party tonight and you’re making me miss it.”

Jesse goes limp and lets himself be pulled down the ladder, locked up in the chains again.

Todd turns to head back up the ladder, but then turns back towards Jesse.

“Heard the guys talking. The kid – Brock – he’s in a foster home.”

Jesse presses his hands against the floor and whispers, “Alive?”

Todd looks surprised, and shrugs, like he doesn’t understand the significance of the question.

“Yeah,” he replies, “Alive.”

****

Two days go by while he cooks. The motions have become completely detached from any emotion or meaning, it’s just moving parts.

Sometimes he lets his mind drift. He makes a perfect box or paints a door a hundred times until it’s right, until it shows something about him that’s been buried under all the pain and burns. He wonders sometimes whether, if he got out somehow, if they dumped him off because they got tired of him, whether the bruises would ever heal.

But no, they wouldn’t dump their stray dog. They’d put him down; their problem dog, the mangy mutt Todd seems to have an odd affection for.

Some days Jesse wishes he were like Todd, that he didn’t feel anything at all.

****

Todd is teaching his dog to do tricks. Jesse wonders which of them has less of a memory of Jesse as a man, as a person.

“Shake.” Todd is showing off for Uncle Jack and for Kenny.

Jesse puts out his hand, presses his knees firmly to the ground, even barking. They seem to like this, seem to be entertained, and when they are entertained they seem to hit him less.

Kenny roars with laughter.

“It’s great, Todd. You keep reminding me why we keep the little rat around.”

Jesse leans into Todd’s petting, his out-turned palm, and he finds himself thinking of Jane. It’s hard to remember being upright, sitting with her on the bed, showing her his sketches, exploring her with his fingers and his tongue, holding her close and not being able to quite get out the words “I love you.”  
It’s easier to picture himself as a stray mutt peeking into Jane’s windows and sniffing the plants outside of the duplex, crawling along on his belly and hoping she’ll open the door but knowing the horrified look she would have on her face if she did.

He tries with all his effort not to think of Andrea.

“Play dead,” Todd instructs, and Jesse rolls on to his back, hands and feet up in the air. 

His back aches, but not as bad as his stomach, where the chains grip him in the lab and in the grate, and always.

Jack chuckles.

“He’s good for a laugh,” he admits, “So long as he stays a good dog.”

Jesse closes his eyes and wonders how long he could stay in that position, dead to them and dead to the world.

****

His hair grows and so does his beard. Todd quips that it makes him furrier, an even better dog.

Jesse remembers watching the movie Shiloh as a kid, where there was a friendly beagle with an evil, cruel owner – he might have been racist too, but Jesse doesn’t quite remember. The kid had kept taking in Shiloh and the evil man had kept taking him back.

But Todd isn’t always outwardly cruel, or cruel at all really. Maybe that’s what makes it so much worse. Todd seems to think that everything he does is all in good fun.

And Todd is his keeper, the closest thing he has to a protector. The most terrifying thought in the world. Todd is the one who brings him his food, who dumps the bucket (at least they aren’t making him go outside, at least not yet, Jesse reminds himself, clinging to any semblance of a bright spot), who intervenes sometimes and says “hey guys” when the others decide to toss Jesse around for fun and add to his scars like they’re playing Connect the Dots or something.  
But he was also the one who held him down and whispered in his ears, “Just tell us everything you told that Fed” as they broke his ribs, as they hit him in the eye until it swelled over again, as they kicked and beat him and he even joined in and kept whispering, “This can all be over” like he was a villain in a James Bond movie.  
Or that book 1984. They read it in high school and Jesse hadn’t read most of it on time but one day he’d gotten bored and actually read it, and the ending had disturbed him so much that he’d found himself wishing that he hadn’t.

He’d found himself wishing they’d do this to anybody else – Mr. White, Mike, Badger, anybody – almost anybody.

God, not Andrea, not Brock. Never them. If he had known, God if he had ever known he would have looked at them and pleaded again and again, do it to me. To me.

****

Sometimes they update the picture on the bulletin board, not that they need to. New candid photos of Brock, walking to school or sitting on the step outside of a house with a couple of other kids.

Jesse tucks them inside his little corner of the grate, a little stack of them. Reminders that one day these people loved him. Good people, pure.

He uses them to count the days, the seasons, watching the backgrounds change ever so slightly the way seasons in the ABQ tend to do. 

He wonders if Andrea can ever forgive him, from wherever she is. He doesn’t hope for it, though – he doesn’t think he would ever deserve it.

He’s Todd’s dog, Todd’s dog.

He lies on his side and whimpers. It’s cold in the grate.

****

One day he’s in the lab, finishing up a cook, thinking of nothing and boxes and another movie he saw once that just kind of ended with the hero and his father driving off into the desert. Todd appears on the ladder and Jesse swivels his head, because these days Todd doesn’t come to the lab anymore until the cook is done.

“Come,” he instructs. Jesse wants to resist because this is not the usual routine and that might mean something bad, might mean Lydia finally gave Todd what he wanted, or told him he was never going to get it, or retired or died, and no there was no use for Jesse anymore.

Maybe he’s being put to sleep.

He doesn’t think about disobeying, simply follows Todd in chains. 

When he sees Mr. White, bearded and dying but still Mr. White, he doesn’t know how to act. Somehow he manages to raise his eyes. If he could, maybe he would growl. 

A moment later, everything is exploding like fireworks on the 4th of July and then Todd is alive and Jesse is strangling him, turning on him, mauling him, hears the neck crunch, bad dog.

He refuses to shoot Mr. White. The man has no reins over him anymore. 

As he rushes out towards a parked car, he steps in Jack’s office for a moment as something catches his eye.

The latest candid shot of Brock. He’s sitting on an outside porch with his arms around a small beagle, laughing as he gets licked in the face.

Jesse smiles as he leaves. He’s happy for him.

After all, doesn’t every boy need a dog?


End file.
